As thousands of opponents of Arizona’s Senate Bill 1070 (SB 1070) march on the Arizona State Capital and a counter demonstration supporting SB 1070 are under way, I thought it would be a good time to delve deeper into the geography of boycotting Arizona.
I’ve lived in Arizona for over 8 years now, and I know many, many people who do not support this xenophobic bill, myself included. As such, I think a boycott of the entire state of Arizona misses the point. There are 9 legislative districts across Arizona where the sitting Senator and House members all voted against this hateful legislation, and another 8 districts where the delegation was split (1 or 2 votes out of a possible 3 for SB 1070).
Especially with respect to the 9 districts with no legislators supporting SB 1070, it’s fairly easy to make the case that the majority of voters living in those districts did not want this law and therefore should not be subject to a blanket boycott of Arizona. The districts where the delegation was split are a bit more difficult to discern and, if you’re considering a boycott, you’ll have to decide for yourself if you want to include those districts in your economic protest. Of course, the districts where the entire delegation votes for SB 1070 should be the target of any boycott.
With that idea in mind, I created a simple map detailing how the delegation from each legislative district voted of SB 1070, which you can see on Geocommons below.
The dark blue areas of the map show the 9 districts where the entire delegation voted against SB 1070. The lighter blue are 3 districts where 1 member voted for the legislation, and the light red are districts where 2 members voted for SB 1070. That leaves the dark red for districts where all 3 members voted for SB 1070.
By panning and zooming aroound the map, it should be pretty easy to see that the downtown cores of Phoenix and Tucson along with Tempe and Flagstaff should be out of bounds for a boycott – they’re legislators all were against SB 1070. So, if you were planning a conference at the Phoenix Convention Center or were planning a stay at the Clarendon Hotel and you canceled your reservations because of SB 1070, please reconsider! It’s also okay to fly into Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport (but not Phoenix-Mesa Gateway!), rent a car in the Rental Car Center and drive to the Grand Canyon, but please don’t stop for lunch in Sedona, Prescott or Camp Verde. Flagstaff, however is just fine! The same is true of the entire Navajo Nation and some of Arizona most beautiful places like Canyon de Chelly, Monument Valley and some of the Painted Desert. Also, if you’re headed to southern Arizona, virtually all of Tucson is a “go” zone, with the exception of the extreme eastern and northern sides. Don’t boycott Tucson (mostly)!!
One thing about this map surprised me – across the Arizona-Mexico border there was not a single legislative district where all legislators supported SB 1070. Of course, the converse is also true – no district voted completely against SB 1070 – but it did surprise me (perhaps it shouldn’t have) that the majority of support for SB 1070 comes from cities in the East Valley (Mesa, Chandler, Gilbert, Apache Junction, etc.), the north and western part of the Phoenix area (north Phoenix, Peoria, Surprise, Buckeye, etc.), and the northwestern part of Arizona with limited support from the border region.
Finally, all three state universities are outside of the boycott zone, as are the stadiums for the Arizona Diamondbacks (Chase Field/BOB) and the Phoenix Suns (US Airways Center). The new Cardinals stadium, however, is someplace you might want to consider staying away from. Perhaps this might get the team to consider playing their home games at Sun Devil Stadium again?
You can download a network linked KML of these data to use in Google Earth, Maps and other applications here.
Last week, I was privileged enough to attended the Innovations in Mobile Data Collection in the Middle East Workshop sponsored by UNICEF Innovation and MobileActive.org in Amman, Jordan. The pre-workshop materials described the “impetus for the workshop” as “UNICEF’s national-scale project in Iraq collecting data from various populations about key indicators and use that data to effect policy and programmatic changes that can improve the lives of children.” The workshop had several stated goals, including:
“An exploration of key issues in citizen-driven data collection in the Middle East. These include technologies, systems, architecture, tools, standards, and people, among others.
Kick-start a regional working group / community around open-source data collection, aggregation and visualization using mobile technology
Map the landscape in the Middle East of applications/technologies, developers, and key thought leaders around real-time distributed data collection, monitoring, and visualization using mobile technology?
Help UNICEF build a roster of potential partners, possible vendors, academic institutions of interest, and groups or individuals to advance UNICEF regional goals.
Prototype new products or improvements of existing products about distributed data collection.”
First, the participant list was loaded with impressive, talented people from the mobile technology, software development, and international development fields. It also included a high level delegation from the Iraqi government from several ministries who were there to begin a dialogue about their future mobile efforts with UNICEF Iraq and ThoughtWorks, the software development firm contracted to develop mobile data collection systems for Iraq. I was honored to be there, and I learned much from each field not only about new mobile apps (and new applications of open source apps), but also about process and language issues that permeate across these fields and cultures, both professional and regional.
Day one began with an introduction from Katrin Verclas, Co-Founder and Editor of MobileActive.org, and Jaya Murthy from UNICEF Iraq both of whom described the interactions they were hoping to facilitate during the three days. Namely, they saw this workshop as an opportunity – with experienced leaders in software development for humanitarian issues – to create an action plan form developing mobile data collection applications and processes that would work in Iraq. After introductions, there were roughly twenty five-minute ignite talks on software and hardware platforms, specific analogous projects and the challenges facing Iraq, especially Iraqi children. Next, we broke up into small roundtable groups to discuss projects that were groundbreaking, why they succeeded and what obstacles mobile projects face in general (and suggestions for overcoming them). I volunteered to lead a table through these three main questions and had several members of the Iraqi delegation at my table.
There were signs at this point that the Iraqis were feeling a bit overwhelmed by the ignite talks and they did seem somewhat frustrated by the roundtable discussion. The group I led did hear some of their issues with the glacial pace of data collection that is currently the norm in Iraq, but I think because the discussion wasn’t directly focused on solving their specific issues (but talking about success stories and challenges), they had a tough time following and seeing parallels between what was possible (as evidenced by the successful projects being discussed) and the issues they were facing. One ray of light during this discussion came from Nadav Aharony, a PhD candidate at the MIT Media Lab, who suggested one way of overcoming the lack of data network coverage could be to use so-called “data mules” such as wi-fi or bluetooth enabled laptops on buses that serve areas with limited data connectivity. Mobile devices could automatically connect to these machines and pass stored data to them, which in turn would be pushed to the data network when the bus reaches an area with connectivity. The Iraqis present for Nadav’s short presentation were very impressed and engaged – they peppered Nadav with questions about how exactly this could be implemented – and it seemed like a promising and fruitful discussion would happen after lunch.
It turns out, however, that the Iraqi delegation felt overwhelmed by the host of tools and projects presented to them and were unsure how any of this could benefit them in Iraq. To the organizer’s credit, they quickly recognized the seriousness of the problem they were facing and sequestered the Iraqi delegation with a handful of software developers – mainly from Thoughtworks – to take several steps back and regain the Iraqis confidence in, generally speaking, the concept of a mobile data collection project in Iraq. Being part of the contingent not in the room with the Iraqis, I can’t relay much of their discussions. Yet, it did take the better part of two days for the Iraqis to feel comfortable enough to re-join the others and present their issues and ideas for mobile data collection projects, which they did during the final afternoon of the workshop.
While that was happening, the other group of workshop participants had a rather academic discussion of the life cycle of data during the first afternoon and began day two with a general overview of agile software development from Thoughtworks. Personally I found this presentation and the follow-up roundtable discussions interesting if somewhat outside of the focus of the workshop, but others in the room either found the topic too specific to software development (and not for international development or other areas) or too basic or general – many folks in the room were experienced developers an agile software development process already. The afternoon of day two featured barcamp style, free form roundtable discussions of general topic areas suggested and led by the participants. I spent some time at Jeffrey Warren’s two sessions – one on Cartagen and the other on using kite/balloon aerial photography to build your own participatory maps – and some at a discussion of the challenges of geo-distributed open source volunteer software development teams (ways to keep them on track, meet deadlines, etc.).
The morning session of the third day featured two “peer assist” sessions where the audience is presented a real, concrete problem and asked to devise solutions. The first issue was related to getting Lebanese youth 18-25 generally engaged in civic participation and more specifically in the upcoming municipal elections. The group devised two tracks of solutions: 1) to develop a Facebook application Lebanese youth can join to answer questions and get information about the elections, and 2) to train youth leaders to conduct audio interviews of other youth at various locations across Lebanon and to archive and plot those interviews on an online map. The latter would allow adults and other youth to hear exactly why someone does of does not want to participate in the upcoming elections or more generally among other things. This was generally acclaimed as a very successful session.
The second issue related to the slums surrounding Cairo and how to use mobile technologies to bring them city services like police, emergency services and sanitation. Sherif Tawfik from the Egypt Child Rights Observatory (part of the Egyptian Ministry of State for Family and Population) gave an impassioned plea for help from this community to somehow use mobile data collection technologies to serve these communities, and the group spent a significant amount of time defining the scope of the problem that Sherif wanted to tackle. Here’s a video of Sherif’s ignite talk, where he gives more detail about the problem:
During the roundtable, I discussed NIRMAN’s efforts in participatory mapping in Dharavi (photo of the hand drawn effort below), the well established slum in Mumbai, India – perhaps the most densely populated spot on the globe. This mapping effort showed in great detail the huge economic assets that exist within the slum in an attempt to persuade the formal banking sector to offer banking services to Dharavi residents. A similar “asset mapping” project – mapping the economic, social and environmental assets that exist within these slums – could have a transformative effect on not only the Egyptian government but Egyptian society, and convince government and businesses to provide much needed services within these slum communities.
In the end, Sherif agreed to develop an action plan based on our discussions and share that with us. It might include a plan to bring several experienced mappers to a Cairo slum to do this kind of “asset” participatory mapping – involving the community! – and publish the data in OpenStreetMap. Perhaps this effort could piggy back on the next MobileActive.org conference? There were some whispers around the workshop that the next MobileActive conference might be in Egypt in May, and if so, that would provide a great opportunity either before or after the conference to at least begin work on an OSM project in a Cairo slum with an eye toward community assets.
The afternoon of the the final day the Iraqis rejoined our group and reported on their work over the last two days. They ultimately focused on two areas where using mobile data collection would be beneficial and appropriate. The first was to use mobiles to collect information for a small portion of the Millennium Development Goals, namely on the prevalence of working children who are not attending school and the barriers to school attendance. The other was the development of the Iraqi Child Protection Information System, which as best as I could understand was a system designed record incidences of child abuse. We then split into two groups so the Iraqis could have some time (about an hour) to interact with the developers/technologists present. I decided to join the MDG group.
It was clear from the start of this last session that to make this a truly beneficial dialogue, we would need many more hours to foster interaction between the Iraqis and the developers. But we only had an hour and our facilitators tried their darnedest to make the most of the hour. Most of the questions from the “technology” community centered on the parameters of the data – what data are they going to collect?, how will they collect it?, who will they collect it from? – the answers to which are imperative to know in generating ideas for what type of technology application is appropriate in this situation. It’s unfortunate that we didn’t have more time with the Iraqis to fully flesh out their ideas and our thoughts about appropriate technologies, but it’s my hope that UNICEF, ThoughtWorks, and the Iraqis themselves will reach out to this community to assess their ideas for projects and applications over the next several months.
After the last session, I gave a short interview that you can view below:
For me, it was truly excellent to meet some of the top thinkers and doers in the mobile applications field, and I hope to continue our discussions that began here over the coming months. Thanks everyone for a great workshop!
If you’re interested in more information, videos, photos, etc. on this workshop, follow these links below:
People from all walks of life support the death penalty, and it hurts my brain thinking that they would wish anyone death. Even someone who has taken the life of another. I tried to look over the evidence for and against the death penalty, and I really could not find good reasons for this barbaric practice that our society has condoned for thousands of years.
If it is a good thing, why is it hidden behind miles of lonely concrete walls? Why is the media kept away from televising it when they constantly show the aftermath of murder and war on television? I wanted to lay out the argument against the death penalty in the simplest way possible, and make sure that the information that I cited is accessible for all of those who wish to see for themselves.
For those that care about the cost to taxpayers of keeping someone in prison for life:
1)There are several statistics floating around that prove that it is actually much cheaper to keep someone in prison for life than to process them through death row.
example: “• In Maryland, an average death penalty case resulting in a death sentence costs approximately $3 million. The eventual costs to Maryland taxpayers for cases pursued 1978-1999 will be $186 million. Five executions have resulted. (Urban Institute 2008).”
2) Just like any disease, personal, or social, this needs to be treated at the source. We cannot just keep treating symptoms. If we put more money into education, and child welfare, it will prevent more murders in the future. If adults received the medical and psychiatric care they needed, this would also help in reducing overall crime, especially violent crimes committed against other human beings. If this is implemented, people will be likelier to become productive, contributing members of society, pay more of the tax dollars, and that way, the tax payers are happy too.
3) Petition your government for the immediate release of all non-violent drug offenders, that will free up plenty of tax dollars wasted, just look at the DEA’s budget and how successful they have been. Just like executions for murder, jail for drug use has not worked as a deterrent. I don’t need to cite statistics for that, just visit your local high school or college party.
For those of you that see capital punishment as a deterrent to other would-be offenders:
1) Do you think that there is any logic involved in that moment of passion where someone decides to take another’s life? Just look at the FBI statistics of the motives, the #1 motive is argument.
2) We have had thousands of years of evidence that capital punishment has existed since the dawn of civilization, and there is obviously still a lot of murder going on, so ask yourself if capital punishment has deterred murder during that time.
For those of you who still see the world through an eye for an eye lens:
1) Violence is cyclical, the more you commit it, the more it comes back. The only weapon that can end violence is love. You can make fun of that assumption and call me a hippie if you’d like. Just find someone you don’t like, someone who you think of as an enemy, and pay them a compliment today, and see their reaction. They will either drop the hostility, or become a lot angrier. But on your end, you will feel freer because you did the nice thing.
2) Many will be upset with me over this because I have not lost a loved one to a murder, and cannot know what they feel.
-I will never claim to know what you feel. My heart goes out to you and your family and your loved ones.
-Vengeance and anger keeps you a victim forever, your loved one will not come back if another family loses someone they love. The loss will not affect the murderer, they have already experienced the loss of their freedom, and if they are mentally stable, the regret of the crime they have committed.
From former Governor George H. Ryan of Illinois, “What kind of victims services are we providing? Are all of our resources geared toward providing this notion of closure by execution instead of tending to the physical and social service needs of victim families? And what kind of values are we instilling in these wounded families and in the young people? As Gandhi said, an eye for an eye only leaves the whole world blind.”
“”In fact, the most blurring weakness is that no matter how efficient and how fair the death penalty may seem in theory, in actual practice, it’s primarily inflicted upon the weak, the poor, the ignorant and against racial minorities.” Now that was a quote from former California Governor Pat Brown. He wrote a book and his daughter sent it to me a couple months ago and the book was titled “Public Justice and Private Mercy.” And he wrote that — nearly 50 years ago he wrote that. Fifty years ago. Now what’s changed in 50 years? Not much. Why not? I don’t know. I don’t have the answer.”
“In the United States the overwhelming majority of those executed are psychotic, alcoholic, drug addicted or mentally unstable. The frequently are raised in an impoverished and abusive environment. Seldom are people with money or prestige convicted of capital offenses, even more seldom are they executed.”
Taken from former Governor Ryan’s speech that he made when he commuted the death penalty sentencing for all of those on death row at the time, toward the end of his term, after having a change of heart about the death penalty and reviewing the Illinois system and several cases.
Finally, all of the above is valid only if the person who is on death row actually committed the crime. The number one argument against the death penalty, in my opinion is the fact that many innocent people continue to be executed.
The statistics these disparities are all out there for you to research, a few sites that are open to the public to get you started:
Recent article in the New Yorker discusses the possible innocence of Cameron Todd Willingham, who was recently executed in Texas.
NPR covers the same story, to those who would like to hear the discussion.
As students head to their classes this week, I’m sure they have made sure they’ve ordered their books and paid for that overpriced parking pass only to walk through an endless ocean of cars to get to class. Some probably bought pens and notebooks, others bought electronic notebooks, with which I hope they refrain from spending the whole lecture instant messaging their friends with fashion critiques of their peers.
Every school year, I have to make sure that I have the latest and greatest software for getting what I want to do done without having paid a single penny. This means hunting down open source software.
For the definition of open source, I will allow Wikipedia, the open source encyclopedia to tell you much better than I can explain it, that “Open source is an approach to the design, development, and distribution of software, offering practical accessibility to a software’s source code.” As you can tell by my use of the phrase “Open Source,” to describe Wikipedia, the phrase is not just reserved for software anymore, there is a whole cultural movement to push for more sharing and openness when it comes to information, especially in the academic community. It is a backlash against the patent offices and RIAAs of the world, kind of a taking back of public knowledge from the market, and making it free and available to everyone.
VersionTracker.com is not strictly open source, but you can start there to see what is available. Their free software is categorized as Freeware, and only some of it is open source. If you want to search only for Open Source software, the best place to go, in my opinion, is Sourceforge.net which is the place where you can find only open source software, available for free download. They have a great menu located at the left side of their main web page, and they have a whole “Education” category that you can look through, especially if you are an engineering student, or are doing research.
Now, before you go on those websites and start downloading like crazy, make sure that you’re actually going to use the software. Make sure you install it and open it right away and try it out. If it does not do what you need it to do, uninstall it and save yourself the hard drive space. I know when I first discovered open source, I couldn’t stop downloading things I didn’t need, and before long, my computer was filled with programs that I didn’t use. Keep your computer clean (and back up often).
Recommended Software for back to school:
Open Office – spreadsheets, presentations, word processing.
GIMP – GNU Image Manipulation Program – almost exactly like Photoshop, without the $700 price tag.
Handbrake – DVD/Video ripper and converter. Simple, quick, easy.
Skype – IM, voice and video chat, for when you have graduated from spammy, toolbaring, privacy hating Yahoo Messenger and/or AIM. The audio/video chat on it is clearer than most cell phones I’ve used.
Note: If you’re still in love with your AIM/YM, and aren’t really ready to let go of that HotGirl79 screen name yet, you can download Adium and log in as all of several different selves all a the same time.
Mozilla Firefox – Because no one should have to use Internet Exploder, or get eaten by a lion while waiting for Safari to load. It is safer surfing, faster, and cleaner.
There are many more solutions for just about anything you need to do at school. Don’t forget to check with your school to see if they offer remote access to software you need, which many universities do these days. Also, always ask for a student discount when purchasing software and hardware for educational purposes.
Here at NiJeL, we’ve been watching the health insurance reform debate carefully over the last several months. With the Congress being in recess now and some Congresspeople under siege form a very loud but small minority, we thought it might be a good time to speak up and show our support for insurance reform.
Our Congressperson, Harry E. Mitchell, is a moderate Democrat, and while he has voiced support for heath insurance reform, he’s by no means a solid yes vote when a final bill comes to the floor of the House. Nate Silver at fivethirtyeight.com gives Congressperson Mitchell a 15.4% chance of voting the House Commerce Committee’s markup based on his probit model that “attempted to predict the outcome of votes on the Energy and Commerce Committee’s markup based on two variables: a member’s DW-NOMINATE score (these scores run from -1 for extremely liberal to +1 for extremely conservative; Freshman members have their scores extrapolated from Progressive Punch data) and whether or not they are listed as a supporter for the public option on Howard Dean’s website.”
Bearing that in mind, we wrote Congressperson Mitchell a letter this morning, and I thought it would be instructive to post the same letter here. If you also support the current push for heath insurance reform, please feel free to use any text from this letter in your own correspondence with your representatives in Congress.
Dear Congressman Mitchell:
I am writing you today to show my support for the heath insurance reform initiatives currently working their way through the House and Senate. While no single bill or plan has emerged from either house before the August recess, I’m writing to express my general support for the ultimate goals of heath insurance reform and to specifically endorse provisions that I think would make a final bill much stronger.
As the founder and owner of NiJeL Incorporated, a Tempe-based small business, I believe it is imperative to control the escalating costs, now one sixth of U.S. GDP, of the health care system. These costs are making private health insurance one of the biggest ticket items our company deals with. There are a number of reasons costs continue to increase at four times the rate of wages:
Being a volume business that pools risk, new private heath insurers face extremely high barriers to entry that in turn stifles market innovation in private insurance
Untaxed health insurance benefits masks the true cost or heath insurance to employees and distorts the market allowing essentially federally subsidized expensive insurance policies and, in turn, expensive tests and treatments
Large numbers of uninsured people with limited preventive care options leave ailments untreated until they become emergencies, costing far more to treat, and
“Cherry-picking” private health insurers disqualify people with pre-existing conditions driving them to higher cost treatment alternatives.
Thinking beyond just the cost to the federal government, controlling system-wide heath care costs is the single most important step we can take to reduce the pressure on our economy and the federal budget coming from the unsustainable increases in heath care costs. To that end, I think it is important that we:
Create an individual mandate such that all Americans are required to carry heath insurance
Create an employer mandate such that every business in America is required to provide heath insurance for their employees
Create a public health insurance option that can compete directly with private heath insurance, and
Create a progressive taxing scheme such that more expensive heath insurance benefits, now currently an untaxed benefit, are taxed at a rate high enough to discourage their use.
An individual health insurance mandate coupled with a requirement that all health insurance providers may no longer “cherry-pick” who they insure will cut costs by pooling risk across more people and improving access to preventive care for the currently uninsured. An employer mandate will help to ensure better access to heath insurance, like the individual mandate, but it will also, given a progressive health insurance benefits taxing scheme, provide a lower cost option for quality health insurance as employers will continue to pay part of their employees monthly premiums.
With the creation of a public health insurance option, the federal government will be more efficient and effective at pooling risk than all private insurers and thus better able to hedge that risk. With the largest risk pool, the federal government would also be able to have significant leverage to negotiate lower prices from its providers. For these two reasons the public health insurance option should be able to provide more coverage for less cost and give private insurers significant competition, which in turn should drive innovation in the marketplace. The public health insurance option is absolutely essential to controlling long term health care costs, and I urge you to support it.
Finally, taxing health insurance benefits on a progressive scale would remove market distortions to hold very expensive, tax-free health insurance benefits and use very expensive medical services – without a thought as to the cost of those services – as a result.
I ask, Congressman Mitchell, that you do all that is in your power to ensure these provisions are included in the final bill, and that you vote to include as many of these as possible both when a bill reaches the House floor and when the House votes on a final bill out of any Senate-House conference committee.
Sincerely,
JD Godchaux
Executive Director
NiJeL Incorporated
(602) 325-3445
jd@nijel.org
I didn’t know my first blog for Nijel would come at such a chaotic time. Just in time for what can be described as a revolution brought to you by Twitter. Iran has erupted with protests over their latest election results. The protesters believe the election loss to current president Ahmadinejad of the reformist presidential candidate Mousavi is attributable to manipulation of the election results.
I’ve been monitoring Twitter.com with #iranelection as the hashtag. Tweets are entering very quickly from supporters of the protesters. From my estimates since I started observing the situation on Sunday afternoon, there are anywhere from 20 to 500 tweets every minute. It was with amazement that I spent hours glued to Twitter attempting to collect a good picture of what is happening in my mind. Of course, people will notice what they want to notice, and omit other things; I am not immune to these things, as objective as I tried to be.
Here are what I think are the Pros and Cons of using Twitter:
Pros
Fast
Affordable (free)
Can be done via Internet or cell phone
Up to date information regarding the situation
An aggregate of worldwide opinions
Doesn’t take up a lot of bandwidth
Cons
Availability
Information distortion
Disinformation
Easily monitored by anyone
Spammers taking advantage of the #IranElection popularity to self-promote
Despite the pros and cons, I believe that Twitter has been absolutely vital at this point. Many news outlets spoke more about the Tweeting of the revolution more than the revolution itself. We even tweeted requests to Twitter to delay scheduled downtime in order to allow people to continue tweeting. There are a lotof people offering technological assistance such as providing proxies for people to get around state blockage, translating from Farsi to English and other languages. I made a graphic for my profiles, and helped re-Tweet (dubbed as RT in the Twitter lexicon) vital information to get it through the less important fodder that is currently taking up most of the Tweets. There were also people wearing green to show their support.
There were several Tweet debates that happened. Such as whether to publicly post IP addresses for Proxies (government monitoring, versus giving the information to as many people as possible.) There were also arguments about whether people wanted to participate in running programs that cause official Iranian governmental sites to crash due to refreshing the page constantly from many computers worldwide. Some wanted to do it in order to keep propaganda from discouraging the dissenters. Others did not want to participate for fear of Iran shutting down the Internet completely. There were also people that changed their location to show that they were in Iran so when the government is monitoring, they will have to look through that many more users they’re trying to track. But that did hurt people who were looking at feeds that you could filter by location. I must admit, I did miss that ability when it was gone, it was great to see just the Tweets that were coming out of Iran from the few people who had Twitter access.
There is outrage at the American (and world) media being very quiet, especially on the television front. And there was news for a while about eleven journalists being detained. There is also outrage at the lack of media reporting in general. There are also complaints about the lack of action or the presence of action by countries whose representatives have spoken or have been silent about the events. The reports of deaths and injuries have been unclear, anywhere from 1-3 deaths and several hundred injuries. There are also rumors that 100 students went missing after raids conducted by either governmental militias or police on Tehran University after 3AM (local time) Sunday night. The Wikipedia page with Mousavi’s biography was change to say that he massacred people in the past, but it quickly got changed back.
A few days ago before the election, I read a blog somewhere that spoke about a girl walking down the street whose scarf fell of her hair because of the wind. The blogger observed her relishing in the few moments of freedom as she deliberately stalled placing it back on her head. To me, that was the moment I smelled the revolution coming. I’ve been also looking at linked photographs and the thing that caught my eye the most was the girls rebelliously showing a little hair as they marched. Some of the most powerful images were on Boston.com Boston.com’s photos have been the most popular, as were several Flickr sites. For videos, there is the one and only Youtube.com type in Iran and Sort by Newest to get the latest videos uploaded by Iranians (and others).
I first thought that I would wait until these events were over in order to post this, but I decided that it is important to share this information now so that more people can follow this revolution as it is being watched by the world. I suggest running over to Twitter right now and watching history unfold.
From a Tweeter not to be named for safety:
“He ran a red light, he got a traffic ticket.” – Ahmadinejad on Mousavi house arrest.
An article this morning in Directions Mag talkes extensively about “an interactive Map Center” built for a UN Humanitarian Information Center website in response to Cyclone Nargis. While I think it’s great the company, IDV Solutions, that built the map could deploy it in a week and there are some very sophisticated features bundled in the application, a few big red flags came up right away for me. First, their solution is tied exclusively to Microsoft SharePoint – integrating it with any other system does not seem to be possible. SharePoint and their solution, Visual Fusion, are both proprietary – we have no idea how these applications work under the hood and if someone else, say at the UN, wanted to replicate this system for another crisis, even if they had the expretise to do so, they could not deploy it themselves. That’s one reason why Ushahidi stands out. It’s open platform will allow any organization with the expertise to deploy their application, whereas with this solution, the UN has to keep coming back to the well. Finally, it appears to be entirely Flash-based on the front end, which might be painfully slow in low bandwidth conditions, or might not work at all on older machines with older browsers. This might look fantastic in the UN headquartes in New York, but in the field I can forsee hardware and bandwidth issues being too much for the system to overcome.
I want to first thank NiJeL for giving me the chance to experience this internship. It has been a pleasure working with JD, Lela, and Nancy. You guys have been really helpful and very informative. I have learned how to work with open source GIS tools such as the batch geocoder. QGis gave me the chance to explore other GIS programs besides ArcGIS. It helped me broaden my horizons in GIS. Going into this internship I did not have any knowledge of other existing GIS programs so it definitely opened my eyes to a new perspective. I also learned about delimiters and how to use them in converting pipe delimited text to shapefiles. In all, my experience here at NiJeL has been great. I wish you guys the best of luck with the organization and with future projects to come. You guys are doing a really good thing for the community and hopefully you guys will expand to a more larger scale. It has been fun working with you guys!
-Richard
p.s. It’s kind of sad that the web cam finally came in! haha
I want to wish everyone a Happy GIS Day! November 19th is the National GIS day. 2008 is the tenth anniversary of GIS day. The convention this year is held by Abu Dhabi or ADSIC (Abu Dhabi Systems and Information Committee). It will be held at the Abu Dhabi National Exhibition Center and will showcase projects currently being carried out by more than 17 organizations that are leading the way in GIS-development in Abu Dhabi. For more information you can visit www.gisday.com
Since my last experience with batchgeocoder I have made it my goal to find the quickest way possible to geocode large amounts of data. Although the batchgeocode.com website recommends you do no more than 500 data sets at a time, I still found that it is relatively slow to do 500. After careful observations I have found that the larger amounts of data sets you put in the more inaccurate the data is. There is also more chances of missed data sets that don’t get geocoded. While observing the geocoder at work, I have discovered that the first 100 data sets get geocoded fairly fast while anything afterwards moves like a slug. For my work this week I had to geocode more data sets for afterschool programs in Arizona. There was 2055 data sets this time. From the troubles of the last assignment I figured I had to do something different. So with my observations I decided that I would geocode the data 100 at a time. It turns out that this method was most efficient because the data was geocoded quickly and the percent error rate of uncoded data was slim to none.
